My name is Debbie Rushton and I have just started a two-year post-doc position working for Tomas Grönstedt in the division of Fluid Dynamics. I will be working on a project called ‘Policy Evaluation for Air Transport Management’, which involves optimising the departure trajectories from Göteborg Landvetter Airport to reduce fuel burn and CO2 emissions. Currently some of the departure routes must divert around small towns due to noise restrictions, and this results in extra fuel burn. However, modern aircraft engines are designed to be much quieter than when the noise regulations were first introduced. Therefore, a noise measurement campaign will be carried out in the vicinity of Landvetter Airport to assess whether aircraft could be routed more directly over some of the small towns and still satisfy the noise requirements. The project will be carried out in collaboration with Swedavia, LFV, Novair and SAS.

In 2006 I completed a PhD in Astrophysics at The University of Manchester in the UK. After this I joined the scientist graduate scheme at National Air Traffic Services (NATS) in their Operational Analysis department. I spent almost four years at NATS and had the opportunity to work on many air traffic related projects. I ended up specialising in wake turbulence encounter monitoring and analysis and also led NATS’ involvement in the EC 7th Framework Project Wakenet3-Europe.